Many studies stress that right-brain-damaged subjects find it difficult to understand metaphors. Yet in most of these studies, only "opaque" metaphors were studied. The understanding of opaque metaphors may be due simply to the previous memorization of idiomatic expressions and not necessarily involve a literal understanding of the terms used in the metaphor. The use of "transparent" metaphors as a more reliable test of what is understood in metaphors would minimize recourse to memory, since it requires the subject to understand directly the lexical constituents of the metaphor. Two samples of different populations were tested. One group consisted of right-brain-damaged subjects and the other one of control subjects who have never suffered any lesions of the central nervous system. Results indicate that, although right-brain-damaged patients have difficulties in processing both types of metaphors, their deficit is more massive when they have to "compute" the meaning of transparent metaphors. (LLBA 1999, vol. 33, n. 5)